


Smoking in Bed

by mysid



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, First War with Voldemort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-01-01
Packaged: 2018-09-13 20:41:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9141433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mysid/pseuds/mysid
Summary: Tensions and suspicions are growing, and they're pulling Sirius and Remus apart.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This began as a fragment of a longer fic, but it died.
> 
> Remus and Sirius belong to JK Rowling.

**Smoking in Bed**

Sirius took a shallow drag from his cigarette and blew out the dry, stale-tasting smoke. He flicked a bit of ash into the softly glowing ashtray on his bedside table before stealing a glance at the bare back of the man asleep beside him. Remus hated when Sirius smoked in bed, but he had charmed the ashtray to glow and left it beside Sirius’s side of the bed anyway. 

Sirius didn’t even like the taste of the cigarettes, and he had no idea why he’d resumed smoking two months ago. The first time he taken up smoking had been to annoy his mother. He thought she’d complain about the smell of smoke in the draperies and upholstery. Instead, she had thrown a fit because it was “a filthy _Muggle_ habit.” Much to his surprise, his father had actually come to his defence by pointing out that several of their ancestors were smoking in their portraits. 

“Pipes. They’re smoking _pipes_ ,” she said while pointing a red-lacquered nail at one of them. “Not Muggle machine-made cigarettes.”

“So cigarettes are alright if I roll my own?” Sirius inquired with a half-suppressed smile. 

The cigarettes had been confiscated, and other matters had soon taken precedence over that petty attempt to annoy his mother. Soon after, he’d found himself on the Potters’ doorstep, and his brief foray into nicotine addiction had been over almost before it had begun.

And yet, here he was years later, smoking again, and he didn’t even quite know why.

“That stinks, you know,” Remus said quietly.

“Didn’t know you were awake.” Sirius took another brief drag, but it was more to see the red glow at the tip of the cigarette than it was inhale the smoke. He blew it out as soon as it was in his mouth.

“I can’t sleep when I smell smoke,” Remus said as he rolled onto his back and looked up at Sirius.

“Sorry, I didn’t realize it would wake you.”

“It didn’t,” Remus admitted. “I couldn’t sleep anyway.”

“There’s a lot of that going around.”

“You know,” Remus rolled onto his side facing Sirius and propped his head up on his hand, “we used to have an effective cure for insomnia.” His free hand stroked across Sirius’s bare belly.

Sirius ignored Remus’s hand until he felt fingertips slip low enough to stroke the coarse curling hairs of his crotch. “Your solution for everything,” he murmured under his breath. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Remus asked as Sirius turned away to stub out the cigarette in the ashtray.

“Nothing. Forget it.” 

Sirius lay down with his back to Remus. An immense gulf seemed to loom between them, and Sirius knew it was his own fault. Life was uncertain and fragile now, and Sirius wanted nothing more than to feel Remus curled around him: Remus’s warmth pressed against his back, Remus’s arms encircling him in a sleepy embrace. There was so much that needed to be left unsaid between them now. Their lives had become a web of secrets and omitted truths. Their work required it. All they had left was the truth that they loved each other. And in his anger at the situation, his anger that touch was all they had left, Sirius had in effect told Remus not to touch him.

Sirius turned back and saw Remus staring at him, faint starlight reflected in his wide eyes. Sirius stroked his hand across the plane of Remus’s cheek and then down Remus’s arm.

“I’m sorry, Love. I’m sorry,” Sirius whispered before he kissed him. 

_\--written August 2004_


End file.
